Ordered figurines

SDG

010 Totems responds to an urgent question in fast-changing cities: whose memories are preserved, and whose disappear. Rotterdam’s streets are continually reshaped by short-term residents, migrants, and commuters, yet official heritage often fixes only monumental, long-term histories. Everyday knowledge, humour, and small frictions at neighbourhood scale rarely enter cultural or urban decision-making, even though they shape whether a city feels welcoming, safe, and livable.

The project builds a participatory archive of “micro-legends” through street-level conversations, shared stories, and walks, translated into a generative pipeline and finally into ceramic totems. This process treats computation as a locally tuned tool, not a neutral extractor: models are guided by situated input, and their output is always filtered, edited, and re-shaped by human judgement and craft.

A key aim is to test how AI can support, rather than replace, artistic creation. Generative tools are used as sketch partners, while selection, composition, and materialisation stay firmly in human hands. Casting the final forms in ceramic—meant to chip, be repaired, and age in place—anchors these digitally assisted processes in long-lived, tactile objects that sustain recognition, humour, and shared ownership of the urban story.

**Night Mayor

Word Count: 500–700 words**

***Profile & Professional Positioning (150–200 words)*Begin by introducing yourself as a creative professional. What do you do, and how would you describe your profile within the creative field? Focus on the tangible skills you’ve developed—technical, conceptual, or collaborative—and how these allow you to create value. This part centers on the “hard” facts: your capabilities, training, and areas of professionalization. (Note: the more subjective, reflective aspects of your identity will be explored in the Manifesto.)

What is it that I actually do? What makes me unique is my aspirations and 5 years.

Albert Kozikowski (1997, Poland) is an all-at-once designer, curious observer and AI-optimist, oscillating between the oil capital of Norway and the port city of the Netherlands.

He channels his curiosity into generative, motion, and 3D design, moving then to physical objects you can touch and relate to. He works fast, switching tools and mediums when ideas flatten, using that restlessness to push concepts into something sharper and more compelling. His method is exploratory and conceptually literal: he translates language into form and reduces ideas to their clearest, most essential shape.

He aims for design and tools that meet people where they are, in plain language and familiar rhythms, with room for memory and habit. Albert relies on input and collaboration to spark ideas and drive the creative process.

He has collaborated with studios and brands around the world, including Studio Dumbar, LVMH, Snøhetta, Canada Goose, and Chanel. His work was recognised with Gold in the European Design Awards 2022 for generative branding for L-nett.

***Free-writing (350–500 words)*This is a space for free writing, where your creativity can guide the format and tone. You may choose to write a descriptive account of your project’s technical development, materials, process, and iterations. Alternatively, you might prefer to introduce a fictional or thematic narrative—perhaps writing a piece of lore that contextualizes your prototype within an imagined world. No matter the form, your text should feel like a natural extension of the profile above, while offering deeper insight into the ideas and intentions behind your work.

First person here, my thoughts, sense of empathy

complex idea becomes easy, consumable thirdperson elsewhere.

Expats and international students have different experience of being in a new country compared to tourists or locals. Curious eye notice different things. I was wondering: what makes Rotterdam the place it is? What things are truly local and nowhere else to be seen? Since when is this a phenomenon? How long will this be something people recognise? Did my friends also notice? Does anyone archive this same way we do archive random websites on the internet?

For many people I informally interviewed Rotterdam was associated with drug abusers and homeless people infamously standing out from the ordinary. I don’t think this is far from usual metropolis nuisance and I didn’t want to make fun of these people. My focus is capturing unique, harmless and funny moments that are obvious to most of longer residents. Local freaks come and go, surf canal might disappear one day.